ULAANBAATAR -- Tears flow down the cheeks of a teenage girl as she pulls her gaze away from the stage. "I'm happy, but we worked so hard," she sobs softly. "I wish our project had won."
It is the final ceremony of a two-month-long coding boot camp for Mongolian girls, many of them from underprivileged backgrounds or nomadic families. We are in a ballroom at a five-star hotel in downtown Ulaanbaatar, and the staff is serving wine to the adults and soft drinks to the youngsters, together with finger food and pastries. The room buzzes with excitement. The girls -- all clad in white T-shirts emblazoned with the hacking program's "Girls </> Code" logo -- are charged up after an evening spent presenting their team projects to an audience of tech industry heavyweights, government officials and foreign diplomats.
